President’s Message
News and notes from around the CIQS Ian Duncan, PQS t is with regret that I have to inform members of the death of one of our founding members Mr. Bill White. He died at the age of 98 years old and to quote Jeff Logan, vice president OIQS, “He was one of the nicest gentlemen I have ever met. As soon as he found out I was a fellow Quantity Surveyor, he had many stories to share and was still a keen follower of what was happening with the OIQS.” Bill shall be surely missed. This past weekend the council meeting was held to coincide with Canada’s largest construction show, Construct Canada, at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. I must say that the CIQS was well attended and people appear to be getting to know where they can find us. I am sure we will get new members from this year’s exposure. Our agenda for the two days of meetings was full starting on Friday afternoon with committee meetings for staffing head office and web site review. Progress is being made in both areas and committees continue to work to put recommendations to council no later than the spring session. On Saturday, we were treated to three presentations. Sheri Thompson outlined her plans to create a young surveyors group in Canada to reflect and work with the PAQS member countries in their initiative for an international young surveyors group. James Vermeulen presented his latest draft of the 6th edition of the CIQS booklet Schedule of Services and Recommended Charges. Council are now
to review the document and hopefully we will have it in print before the next AGM in Whistler. The third presentation was by Vaughn Smith PQS who is working on a proposal to provide online courses to members for subjects that are not presently covered by distance education in the colleges. Vaughan has already prepared the course for 308 Cost Planning and is almost complete with 309 Development Economics. Vaughn has run online courses for over 5,000 building students and worked with Athabasca, Algonquin and Sheridan colleges. I am very excited at the prospect on these and future courses coming on stream in house. We are considering extending the scope of courses to cover our new Heavy Civils category as well as supplementary subjects to support mechanical and electrical disciplines. I am proud to report that at this meeting Council agreed to pursue the upgrade of the education level of PQS to as close as possible to bachelor degree level. This initiative will be spearheaded by our tireless education administrator Mr. David Lai PQS(F). It is anticipated that it might take as much as five years to make the full transition. Once again QSBC has risen to the challenge and set up a student chapter at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology). Chris Reinert and Bruno Pilieci are visiting BC this month. Reps from AQSA continue to support Red River College and Norm Lux and Chris Reinert will be joined by David Lai in February for a pres-
entation to the college related to their courses. Roger Ward was due to attend but I have to inform the many friends of Roger Ward that he has had an accident which broke his hip. We wish Roger a speedy recovery. At OIQS, Sheri Thompson and I visited with Conestoga College. We also attended an open house at Ryerson University with others from OIQS. President Bruno Pilieci visited Georgian College. As you can see, we are active in the colleges across the country. Finally, in my last President’s message, I put out a call for assistance from mature members and fellows to assist in the various functions that council and affiliate board member just do not have time for. I was amazed and gratified to receive 35 offers of assistance from across the country. If you volunteered and have not yet been put to work, please be patient. We will get to you. Roy Lewis is mustering the civils guys, Mark Russell is handling publications and Sorina Du Toit is running the mentorship program. The CPD program is still under development but it has been agreed that the mandatory minimum 50 points will come into effect in the coming year. So some progress across the board I trust you will agree. We heard QSBC’s plans from Mark Russell for the 2010 CIQS AGM in Whistler next summer. With their usual style, this promises to be a splendid affair. I encourage as many as possible to swell the numbers and continue the momentum of the 50 th.
“I was amazed and gratified to receive 35 offers of assistance from across the country.” 4 | Construction Economist | www.ciqs.org | winter 2009
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